There is obviously some Obama bias in the media. But would you not agree that the first viable African American presidential candidate's trip Europe and the Middle East deserves a bit more coverage than usual? And might it be possible that Obama's "flavor of the week" celebrity is driving a lot of the coverage? The networks know a lot of people will watch him, so they're going to force the rest of us to sit through it.

If I were the other side, I'd be happy for Obama's excessive media coverage, as it gives him plenty of opportunity to shoot himself in the foot. And with the number of gaffes that McCain has thrown out in the past few weeks, he's proving himself to be about as poor a "live television" guy as possible.

I'd be perfectly happy not seeing either one of them on television for the next 2 1/2 months, until debate time.

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, July 17, 2008 4:20 PM PTJournalism: Barack Obama is headed overseas, with the three network anchors trailing behind him like groupies ga-ga over a rock star. And they say that media bias is just a myth.

Obama will begin his travels Friday with a visit to Europe and continue on to the Middle East. These are not normal campaign stops for a man running for president. But Obama is no common man — at least as the media see him.They have uncritically anointed him a savior and are eager to be in his presence as he makes his "historic" trip. NBC News anchor Brian Williams, ABC anchor Charles Gibson and CBS anchor Katie Couric will be on hand, and they'll scratch and claw each other to get that exclusive interview.Obama's arrogance — playing president and planning to speak in front of Berlin's symbolic Brandenburg Gate — is unseemly enough. But the media fawning is a disgrace. Other than those reporters assigned to John McCain, do they even know that Obama's opponent in the fall has made not one, but three trips overseas since March?Not only did the anchors pass on those tours, their respective networks "provided little if any coverage of any of them," according to an analysis by the Media Research Center. When McCain was in Europe and the Middle East for a week in March, the networks that will immortalize Obama's triumphant tour carried only four full stories on the trip."CBS did not even send a correspondent along" and offered "only one report consisting of only 31 words" over 10 seconds for "the entire week Sen. McCain was abroad," the MRC reports.The media, which seem endlessly interested when Obama downs a hot dog or picks up a basketball, and which feel a collective tingle in their legs whenever he speaks, couldn't even limit their description of the junior senator's haircut to 31 words.Network chiefs say they need to be with Obama on this trip to record how he performs on the world stage. That's plausible. We'll believe it, though, only if Obama commits a gaffe and the press actually does more than gloss over it.The liberal national media are free to put all their resources into Obama coverage, encourage Americans to vote for him and ignore McCain entirely. Our Constitution gives them the liberty to do just that. What rankles us is the facade of objectivity they put up. All we're asking for is some honesty.

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, July 17, 2008 4:20 PM PTJournalism: Barack Obama is headed overseas, with the three network anchors trailing behind him like groupies ga-ga over a rock star. And they say that media bias is just a myth.

Obama will begin his travels Friday with a visit to Europe and continue on to the Middle East. These are not normal campaign stops for a man running for president. But Obama is no common man  at least as the media see him.They have uncritically anointed him a savior and are eager to be in his presence as he makes his "historic" trip. NBC News anchor Brian Williams, ABC anchor Charles Gibson and CBS anchor Katie Couric will be on hand, and they'll scratch and claw each other to get that exclusive interview.Obama's arrogance  playing president and planning to speak in front of Berlin's symbolic Brandenburg Gate  is unseemly enough. But the media fawning is a disgrace. Other than those reporters assigned to John McCain, do they even know that Obama's opponent in the fall has made not one, but three trips overseas since March?Not only did the anchors pass on those tours, their respective networks "provided little if any coverage of any of them," according to an analysis by the Media Research Center. When McCain was in Europe and the Middle East for a week in March, the networks that will immortalize Obama's triumphant tour carried only four full stories on the trip."CBS did not even send a correspondent along" and offered "only one report consisting of only 31 words" over 10 seconds for "the entire week Sen. McCain was abroad," the MRC reports.The media, which seem endlessly interested when Obama downs a hot dog or picks up a basketball, and which feel a collective tingle in their legs whenever he speaks, couldn't even limit their description of the junior senator's haircut to 31 words.Network chiefs say they need to be with Obama on this trip to record how he performs on the world stage. That's plausible. We'll believe it, though, only if Obama commits a gaffe and the press actually does more than gloss over it.The liberal national media are free to put all their resources into Obama coverage, encourage Americans to vote for him and ignore McCain entirely. Our Constitution gives them the liberty to do just that. What rankles us is the facade of objectivity they put up. All we're asking for is some honesty.

Maybe that is because Sen. McCain is soooooo boring??? I mean listen to him speak; even his supportersfall asleep. The networks are a business. They go where the ratings will be. Who/What doesAmerica want to watch??? What will drive ratings? And it isn't McCain.

And good grief, McCain is over 70 years old! Most people retire at 65; most top investment firmsand nearly all top accounting firms have mandatory retirement at 60 - they want fresh new ideas and energy from people at their prime. I mean we all should love and respect our Grandfather, but ...

ps Didn't Sen. McCain earlier criticize Obama for not going overseas and on at least two occassions didn't he tauntObama to do so? I guess Obama just listened and followed his advice. And now McCain complains that Obamagets all the attention??? hmmm

Maybe that is because Sen. McCain is soooooo boring??? I mean listen to him speak; even his supportersfall asleep. The networks are a business. They go where the ratings will be. Who/What doesAmerica want to watch??? What will drive ratings? And it isn't McCain.

**Is Obama more interesting than McCain? Sure. Should we as a people select a president using the same criteria we'd use to select a talk show host? Especially in a time of war and loose nukes? Should the MSM have at least try for a superficial attempt at impartiality?**

And good grief, McCain is over 70 years old! Most people retire at 65; most top investment firmsand nearly all top accounting firms have mandatory retirement at 60 - they want fresh new ideas and energy from people at their prime. I mean we all should love and respect our Grandfather, but ...

**Obama's ideas aren't new. Some of them date back to the Carter administration. His pursuit of an American defeat in Iraq is very 60's. Perhaps having seen the impact of those ideas firsthand, McCain is in a better position to avoid the repeat of those mistakes.**

ps Didn't Sen. McCain earlier criticize Obama for not going overseas and on at least two occassions didn't he tauntObama to do so? I guess Obama just listened and followed his advice. And now McCain complains that Obamagets all the attention??? hmmm [/quote]

**I'm glad Obama is traveling overseas. Sadly, the trip is probably now one of the more important accomplishments in his wafer thin resume, not that the anchors will be pointing this out in the midst of their fawn-fest.**

"ps Didn't Sen. McCain earlier criticize Obama for not going overseas and on at least two occassions didn't he tauntObama to do so? I guess Obama just listened and followed his advice. And now McCain complains that Obamagets all the attention??? hmmm"

There are two separate points here:

1) Failure to go to Iraq and Afg, and its rectification (not without having formed yet another opinion first )2) Media coverage thereof.

Concerning the latter, the disparity is huge-- what is happening on this trip has been happening every day. In my hometown LA Times, I regularly find BO on the front page and McC on page 15 or page 8.

McCain Campaign: New York Times Blocked Op-Ed Response to Obamaby FOXNews.comMonday, July 21, 2008

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McCain: John McCain and former President George H.W. Bush arrive for a news conference at the Bush family home in Kennebunkport, Maine. (AP Photo)

The New York Times on Friday blocked an opinion piece submitted by John McCain to the newspaper shortly after it printed a piece by his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, McCain campaign officials confirmed to FOX News on Monday.

Obama’s piece detailed his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan. While McCain’s proposed piece also discussed Iraq, The Times told McCain’s advisers that it would not accept the op-ed in its current form because it did not offer new information. Obama’s speech previewed a series of speeches leading up to a highly publicized trip to war zones in the Middle East.

“I’d be very eager to publish the senator on the op-ed page. However, I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written. I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft. Let me suggest an approach,” Times op-ed editor David Shipley wrote the campaign via an e-mail later distributed by McCain’s team.

“It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the Senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan,” Shipley wrote.

Shipley, who was named deputy editor in January 2003, served in the Clinton administration as a senior presidential speechwriter and special assistant to the president from 1995 to 1997.

McCain campaign Communications Director Jill Hazelbaker said the two candidates “have very different world views” about Iraq and the campaign wanted an opportunity to state its candidate’s view.

“We have elections in this country, not coronations and it’s unfortunate that The New York Times wouldn’t allow their readers to hear from John McCain and make their own judgment,” Hazelbaker told FOX News.

“John McCain believes that victory in Iraq must be based on conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables. Unlike Barack Obama, that position will not change based on politics or the demands of the New York Times,” added McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

The New York Times issued a statement defending its process of posting op-eds.

“It is standard procedure on our Op-Ed page, and that of other newspapers, to go back and forth with an author on his or her submission. We look forward to publishing Senator McCain’s views in our paper just as we have in the past. We have published at least seven op-ed pieces by Senator McCain since 1996. The New York Times endorsed Senator McCain as the Republican candidate in the presidential primaries. We take his views very seriously,” said Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis.

Obama’s op-ed ran on July 14, days before the Democratic presidential candidate departed for Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a congressional delegation that received coverage from all three broadcast networks’ news services. It is the first time the networks have traveled overseas with a candidate.

Hazelbaker said that it’s not her job to police the media coverage, but the campaign would have liked to have “made our case directly to the voters.”

“We think the American voter is smart enough to make the call on their own,” she said.

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80 percent to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City — actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war — only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Tomorrow, CBS’s Katie Couric will interview Barack Obama from Jordan. On Wednesday, ABC’s Charlie Gibson will chat with him from Israel. And on Thursday, NBC’s Brian Williams will do the honors from Germany. Call it the presidential campaign equivalent of Shooting the Moon.And to think, a few short months ago the Washington establishment was buzzing about the press’s pending dilemma: With Obama and John McCain looking like the all-but-certain nominees of their respective parties, how would the media choose between its new crush, Obama, and its long-time paramour, McCain? The Illinois senator has been a media darling since he burst onto the scene at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2004, and during the Democratic primary season, he bested Hillary Clinton in both quantity of coverage (he got more) and tenor (his was way more positive). But McCain has gotten so much favorable media attention over the years that he often joked that the press was his political base. In a head-to-head competition, who would win?So far, the answer is clear: Obama is The One. In the first quarter of the general election, he has simply gotten more and better coverage than McCain. For those who need more evidence than the enormous press entourage that is treating Obama’s current trip not like the campaign swing of a presidential candidate, but like the international debut of the New American President, there are several new studies which help quantify the disparity.The Project for Excellence in Journalism, which evaluates more than 300 newspaper, magazine, and television stories each week, found that from June 9 (after Obama had wrapped up the Democratic nomination) until July 13, Obama was more prominently covered every single week. During one particular week, July 7–13, McCain was a significant presence in 48 percent of the stories—but Obama met that mark in 77 percent of the pieces. Similarly, the Tyndall Report, a media monitoring group, found that Obama received substantially more media attention.I can only imagine what the gap must be like this week, as Obama continues to meet with world leaders and adoring crowds, while the mere presence of media’s biggest and brightest stars stamps each and every event as important!Given all that, it’s not surprising that voters, particularly those of the Republican persuasion, think the media is more or less in Obama’s pocket. A recent survey by Rasmussen found that 49 percent of the likely voters they talked to believed that reporters would favor Obama in their coverage, while just 14 percent said the same about McCain. Seventy-eight percent of Republicans thought the press would try and help Obama win, while only 21 percent of Democrats thought journalists were in bed with McCain. Complaints about bias are only exacerbated when the New York Times (the bête noire of the right) rejects an opinion piece written by McCain comparing his position on Iraq to Obama’s—just days after the Times ran a similar piece by Obama.Suspicions of pro-Obama bias began in the primaries. A Pew survey in late May and early June found that 37 percent of Americans believed that Obama received preferential coverage; only eight percent said the same about his principal opponent, Hillary Clinton.There are lot of “explanations” for the lopsided coverage: Obama is new and what’s new is “news.” As the first African-American to run a serious race, let alone win a major party’s nomination, Obama is running an historic campaign. Obama has created a “movement,” and Americans are simply more interested in him than in his opponents. Obama is running a smarter campaign, and he knows how to court media attention. It’s also true that intense media coverage is a double- edged sword: the attention is great when things are going well, but it can doom a candidate if and when things start to go badly. And so far, Obama has had way more good days than bad days. Each of those rationales is largely true—and somewhat less than satisfying.At the end of the day, this will be a long campaign, and what’s true in July may not be true in November. But what seems indisputably true—to quote another dazzling young Democrat who received disproportionately favorable media attention, John Kennedy—is this: “Life is unfair.”

OK Pelosi et al are upset over talk radio. They proclaim we need a "fairness doctrine".Conservative talk radio *is* as it is, the closest thing to fairness. Why take a look at the "mass media". There is little fairness there.Of course Pelosi is silent about that. BOs lead of ~48 to 42% is roughly the same as Clinton's margins of winning. Our country remains as divided as ever. Having a person with a flaming liberal history (BO) proclaim he is going to get past that and unite us would be as absurd as seeing Pat Robertson doing the same thing from the right. I don't know, has our country ever been as split since the Civil War?

This should be the headlines on all the newspapers. But we will never see it.

The New York Times' refusal to publish John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's Iraq op-ed may be the most glaring example of liberal media bias this journalist has ever seen. But true proof of widespread media bias requires one to follow an old journalism maxim: Follow the money.

Even the Associated Press — no bastion of conservatism — has considered, at least superficially, the media's favoritism for Barack Obama. It's time to revisit media bias.

True to form, journalists are defending their bias by saying that one candidate, Obama, is more newsworthy than the other. In other words, there is no media bias. It is we, the hoi polloi, who reveal our bias by questioning the neutrality of these learned professionals in their ivory-towered newsrooms.

Big Media applies this rationalization to every argument used to point out bias. "It's not a result of bias," they say. "It's a matter of news judgment."

And, like the man who knows his wallet was pickpocketed but can't prove it, the public is left to futilely rage against the injustice of it all.

The "newsworthy" argument can be applied to every metric — one-sided imbalances in airtime, story placement, column inches, number of stories, etc. — save one.

An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans .

Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans — a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.

Searches for other newsroom categories (reporters, correspondents, news editors, anchors, newspaper editors and publishers) produces 311 donors to Democrats to 30 donors to Republicans, a ratio of just over 10-to-1. In terms of money, $279,266 went to Dems, $20,709 to Republicans, a 14-to-1 ratio.

And while the money totals pale in comparison to the $9-million-plus that just one union's PACs have spent to get Obama elected, they are more substantial than the amount that Obama has criticized John McCain for receiving from lobbyists: 96 lobbyists have contributed $95,850 to McCain, while Obama — who says he won't take money from PACs or federal lobbyists — has received $16,223 from 29 lobbyists.

A few journalists list their employer as an organization like MSNBC, MSNBC.com or ABC News, or report that they're freelancers for the New York Times, or are journalists for Al Jazeera, CNN Turkey, Deutsche Welle Radio or La Republica of Rome (all contributions to Obama). Most report no employer. They're mainly freelancers. That's because most major news organization have policies that forbid newsroom employees from making political donations.

As if to warn their colleagues in the media, MSNBC last summer ran a story on journalists' contributions to political candidates that drew a similar conclusion:

"Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left."

The timing of that article was rather curious. Dated June 25, 2007, it appeared during the middle of the summer news doldrums in a non-election year — timing that was sure to minimize its impact among the general public, while still warning newsrooms across the country that such political donations can be checked.

In case that was too subtle, MSNBC ran a sidebar story detailing cautionary tales of reporters who lost their jobs or were otherwise negatively impacted because their donations became public.

As if to warn their comrades-in-news against putting their money where their mouth is, the report also cautioned that, with the Internet, "it became easier for the blogging public to look up the donors."

It went on to detail the ban that most major media organizations have against newsroom employees donating to political campaigns, a ban that raises some obvious First Amendment issues. Whether it's intentional or not, the ban makes it difficult to verify the political leanings of Big Media reporters, editors and producers. There are two logical ways to extrapolate what those leanings are, though.

One is the overwhelming nature of the above statistics. Given the pack mentality among journalists and, just like any pack, the tendency to follow the leader — in this case, Big Media — and since Big Media are centered in some of the bluest of blue parts of the country, it is highly likely that the media elite reflect the same, or an even greater, liberal bias.

A second is to analyze contributions from folks in the same corporate cultures. That analysis provides some surprising results. The contributions of individuals who reported being employed by major media organizations are listed in the nearby table.

The contributions add up to $315,533 to Democrats and $22,656 to Republicans — most of that to Ron Paul, who was supported by many liberals as a stalking horse to John McCain, a la Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos with Hillary and Obama.

What is truly remarkable about the list is that, discounting contributions to Paul and Rudy Giuliani, who was a favorite son for many folks in the media, the totals look like this: $315,533 to Democrats, $3,150 to Republicans (four individuals who donated to McCain).

January 15, 2008 -- THE New York Times is trashing our troops again. With no new "atrocities" to report from Iraq for many a month, the limping Gray Lady turned to the home front. Front and center, above the fold, on the front page of Sunday's Times, the week's feature story sought to convince Americans that combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning troops into murderers when they come home.Heart-wringing tales of madness and murder not only made the front page, but filled two entire centerfold pages and spilled onto a fourth.

The Times did get one basic fact right: Returning vets committed or are charged with 121 murders in the United States since our current wars began.

Had the Times' "journalists" and editors bothered to put those figures in context - which they carefully avoided doing - they would've found that the murder rate that leaves them so aghast means that our vets are five times less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers.

The Times' public editor, Clark Hoyt, should crunch the numbers. I'm even willing to spot the Times a few percentage points (either way). But the hard statistics from the Justice Department tell a far different tale from the Times' anti-military propaganda.

A very conservative estimate of how many different service members have passed through Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait since 2003 is 350,000 (and no, that's not double-counting those with repeated tours of duty).

Now consider the Justice Department's numbers for murders committed by all Americans aged 18 to 34 - the key group for our men and women in uniform. To match the homicide rate of their peers, our troops would've had to come home and commit about 150 murders a year, for a total of 700 to 750 murders between 2003 and the end of 2007.

In other words, the Times unwittingly makes the case that military service reduces the likelihood of a young man or woman committing a murder by 80 percent.

Yes, the young Americans who join our military are (by self- selection) superior by far to the average stay-at-home. Still, these numbers are pretty impressive, when you consider that we're speaking of men and women trained in the tools of war, who've endured the acute stresses of fighting insurgencies and who are physically robust (rather unlike the stick-limbed weanies the Times prefers).

All in all, the Times' own data proves my long-time contention that we have the best behaved and most ethical military in history.

Now, since the folks at the Times are terribly busy and awfully important, let's make it easy for them to do the research themselves (you can do it, too - in five minutes).

Just Google "USA Murder Statistics." The top site to appear will be the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. Click on it, then go to "Demographic Trends." Click on "Age." For hard numbers on the key demographics, click on the colored graphs.

Run the numbers yourself, based upon the demographic percentages of murders per every 100,000 people. Then look at the actual murder counts.

Know what else you'll learn? In 2005 alone, 8,718 young Americans from the same age group were murdered in this country. That's well over twice as many as the number of troops killed in all our foreign missions since 2001. Maybe military service not only prevents you from committing crimes, but also keeps you alive?

Want more numbers? In the District of Columbia, our nation's capital, the murder rate for the 18-34 group was about 14 times higher than the rate of murders allegedly committed by returning vets.

And that actually understates the District's problem, since many DC-related murders spill across into Prince George's County (another Democratic Party stronghold).

In DC, an 18-34 population half the size of the total number of troops who've served in our wars overseas committed the lion's share of 992 murders between 2003 and 2007 - the years mourned by the Times as proving that our veterans are psychotic killers.

Aren't editors supposed to ask tough questions on feature stories? Are the Times' editors so determined to undermine the public's support for our troops that they'll violate the most-basic rules of journalism, such as putting numbers in context?

Answer that one for yourself.

Of course, all of this is part of the disgraceful left-wing campaign to pretend sympathy with soldiers - the Times column gushes crocodile tears - while portraying our troops as clichéd maniacs from the Oliver Stone fantasies that got lefties so self-righteously excited 20 years ago (See? We were right to dodge the draft . . .).

And it's not going to stop. Given the stakes in an election year, the duplicity will only intensify.

For an upcoming treat, we'll get the film "Stop-Loss," starring, as always, young punks who never served in uniform as soldiers. This left-wing diatribe argues that truly courageous troops would refuse to return to Iraq - at a time when soldiers and Marines continue to re-enlist at record rates, expecting to plunge back into the fight.

Those on the left will never accept that the finest young Americans are those who risk their lives defending freedom. Sen. John Kerry summed up the views of the left perfectly when he disparaged our troops as too stupid to do anything but sling hamburgers.

And The New York Times will never forgive our men and women in uniform for their infuriating successes in Iraq.

Gotcha: Senator John Edwards, whose wife has cancer, has been caught in a sex scandal that ends his vice-presidential hopes

Sarah Baxter in WashingtonSCRATCH John Edwards off the list of potential vice-presidential candidates. The former White House contender, who had been hoping to get the nod from Barack Obama, is in the midst of a full-blown sex scandal.

Every supermarket shopper knows that the preternaturally youthful former senator for North Carolina may have fathered a love child with a film-maker while Elizabeth, his saintly wife, is dying of cancer. There are sensational new details on the National Enquirer website, although most of the media have done their best to ignore them.

The tabloid magazine cornered Edwards, 55, leaving a Los Angeles hotel where Rielle Hunter, his alleged mistress, and her baby were staying, at 2.40am last Tuesday. He ran down a hallway and dived into the men’s bathroom. A hotel security guard confirmed the encounter. “His face just went totally white,” the guard said.

The story has been bubbling away for months, but so far there has been not a word about it in the mainstream newspapers, even though Edwards was John Kerry’s running mate in 2004 and has been tipped for a prominent job in an Obama administration – if not vice-president, then attorney-general or antipoverty tsar.

He can stop waiting by the telephone. News of the “gotcha” rapidly circulated on the internet via the Drudge Report and has been buzzing on the blogs. The Enquirer’s story appears to be well sourced.

According to the magazine, Edwards arrived at the Beverly Hilton on Monday at 9.45pm after attending a meeting on homelessness in Los Angeles and was dropped off at a side entrance. Two rooms were allegedly booked for Hunter in a friend’s name.

Edwards emerged hours later and was confronted by journalists from the Enquirer. His usual spokesmen and defenders have scurried for cover behind a wall of “no comment”, while the details of the story have gone unchallenged.

Even so, Tony Pierce, editor of the Los Angeles Times, issued an edict to the paper’s own bloggers to stay off the subject. “Because the only source has been the National Enquirer, we have decided not to cover the rumours or salacious speculations,” he wrote.

Mickey Kaus, a blogger for Slate magazine, leaked the memo. He noted: “This was a sensational scandal that the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream papers passionately did not want to uncover when Edwards was a formal candidate and now that the Enquirer seems to have done the job for them it looks like they want everyone to shut up while they fail to uncover it again.”

The New York Times has not deigned to touch the story, although it recently ran thousands of words on a relationship between McCain and a female lobbyist, which appeared to be based more on innuendo than fact.

Byron York, a conservative journalist, finally broke the silence in The Hill, a reputable, non-partisan congressional newspaper. “The media looks down on the National Enquirer but you look at the Edwards story and say, ‘Wow! There appears to be a lot of knowledge there’. It is darned fishy,” York said.

Edwards appeared at a press conference on poverty in Houston shortly after the Enquirer story broke. All he would say was: “I don’t talk about these tabloids. They’re tabloid trash and just full of lies.” There was no explicit denial.

York believes sympathy for Edwards’s wife may partly account for the media blackout. “She’s a very high-profile wife and she’s suffering from cancer. But if the story is true, this was going on when he was running for president.”

If Edwards is the father of Hunter’s child, he may also be responsible for an elaborate cover-up which would call into question his political integrity as well as his fidelity. An aide to Edwards had previously claimed via a lawyer that he (the aide) was the father.

Hunter’s existence was first mentioned by Newsweek in 2006, when the magazine claimed that the little-known film-maker had been commissioned by the millionaire candidate to make behind-the-scenes web videos of his presidential campaign after they “met in a New York bar”.

Hunter, a former aspiring actress, was paid $114,000 (£57,000) for her work. Months later, a writer on The Huffington Post website wondered what had happened to the videos, which had vanished from Edwards’s campaign site. The headline read, “Edwards mystery: innocuous videos suddenly shrouded in secrecy”.

As the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination gathered pace in October last year, the Enquirer claimed that Hunter was the candidate’s mistress. “It’s completely untrue. Ridiculous,” Edwards said. “I’ve been in love with the same woman for 30 years.” Two months later the magazine revealed that Hunter, a 43-year-old divorcee, was six months pregnant.

The story took a bizarre turn when she claimed that Andrew Young, a long-time aide to Edwards and a married family man, was the father of her child. Young’s lawyer acknowledged his paternity.

Hunter moved from New York to the same gated community in North Carolina as Young and his wife and young children, raising speculation that he was really her minder. Young has not commented on the latest allegations.

The National Enquirer may publish photographs corroborating Edwards’s presence at the hotel this weekend. A reporter for The Washington Post said yesterday: “To be quite honest, we’re waiting to see the pictures. That said, Edwards is no longer an elected official and he is not running for office now. Don’t expect wall-to-wall coverage.”

The Clinton Connection

Roger Altman, who has a controlling stake in the National Enquirer, is a former official in Bill Clinton’s administration. Some wags believe the magazine poured resources into the love child story to scupper John Edwards’s chances of beating Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.

Were the latest revelations timed to finish him off as a potential running mate? Despite the rumours, it is not likely. Few people think Clinton is still on Barack Obama’s shortlist.

David Perel, the Enquirer’s editor-in-chief, said the magazine’s parent company had “nothing to do with the editorial side, which I run”.

“We stayed on the story,” he said. “We did it the old-fashioned way with lots of legwork. We did what the [big] news organisations used to do. We knocked on doors, ran down leads and talked to people.”

Hollywood Takes on the Left David Zucker, the director who brought us 'Airplane!' and 'The Naked Gun,' turns his sights on anti-Americanism. by Stephen F. Hayes 08/11/2008, Volume 013, Issue 45

Los AngelesFor anyone who has ever been on a movie set, the commotion inside Warner Brothers Studio 15 will be familiar: serious-faced actors and actresses quietly rehearsing their lines; the director of photography huddled with his assistants around two high-definition screens inside a small black tent reviewing the last scenes; extras lounging around the set trying both to stay out of the way and to get noticed; carpenters busily working to construct the set for the next scene; a frazzled first assistant director guzzling Red Bull and yelling instructions to anyone who will listen.

"Rolling," he shouts.

Others throughout the cavernous studio echo his call.

"Rolling! Quiet please!"

David Zucker is sitting in a high-backed director's chair with his name on it. (I'd always assumed they were just used for effect in movies, but here one was.) Zucker is looking at a monitor showing the inside of an empty New York City subway station. It's actually just a set--a stunning replica of a subway station--and it sits 15 feet to Zucker's right.

The first assistant director breaks the silence.

"Action!"

The set jumps to life. Two young men--both terrorists--enter the station. They are surprised to see a security checkpoint manned by two NYPD officers. "I'll need to see your bag, please," says one of the officers. The lead terrorist glances nervously at his friend and swings his backpack down from his shoulder to present it to the cops. Just as the officer pulls on the zipper, however, a small army of ACLU lawyers marches up to the policemen with a stop-search order. The cops look at each other and shrug their shoulders. "This says we can't search their bags."

The young men are relieved. They smile fiendishly as they walk toward the crowded platform. As the lead terrorist once again slips the backpack over his shoulder, he mutters his appreciation.

"Thank Allah for the ACLU."

Zucker's latest movie, An American Carol, is unlike anything that has ever come out of Hollywood. It is a frontal attack on the excesses of the American left from several prominent members of a growing class of Hollywood conservatives. Until now, conservatives in Hollywood have always been too few and too worried about a backlash to do anything serious to challenge the left-wing status quo.

David Zucker believes we are in a "new McCarthy era." Time magazine film writer Richard Corliss recently joked that conservative films are "almost illegal in Hollywood." Tom O'Malley, president of Vivendi Entertainment, though, dismisses claims that Hollywood is hostile to conservative ideas and suggests that conservatives simply haven't been as interested in making movies. "How come there aren't more socialists on Wall Street?"

But Zucker's film, together with a spike in attendance at events put on by "The Friends of Abe" (Lincoln, not Vigoda)--a group of right-leaning Hollywood types that has been meeting regularly for the past four years--is once again reviving hope that conservatives will have a battalion in this exceedingly influential battleground of the broader culture war.

Zucker has always been interested in politics. He was raised in Shorewood, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, in a household where Franklin Delano Roosevelt was viewed as either a hero or a dangerous conservative. He was elected president of his senior class at the University of Wisconsin, and, when he addressed his classmates at commencement in the spring of 1970, his speech was serious--a friend describes it as "solemn" and political. Among other things, Zucker condemned the Kent State shootings and lamented the mistreatment of America's blacks. Two years later, he appeared on stage with lefty leading man Warren Beatty and Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. Zucker says at the time he was "very liberal." (His brother Jerry remains an unreconstructed liberal and recently optioned a sympathetic movie about the life and times of serial fabulist Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame.)

David Zucker got his start in entertainment right after school. In 1971, he teamed up with his brother and two friends to create an irreverent revue called Kentucky Fried Theater. They drew large crowds to cafés and small theaters in Madison and soon outgrew the college town. They went to Hollywood to chase the dream, and, surprise, the show worked in Southern California, too.

They caught the attention of some of Hollywood's boldfaced names--the show would serve as one of Lorne Michaels's inspirations for Saturday Night Live--and in 1977 they released their first film, The Kentucky Fried Movie. It was the first of many classics: Airplane!, Top Secret!, The Naked Gun, BASEketball. Actually, BASEketball sucked, but by the time it was released in 1998, Zucker had put together enough of a streak that he was widely regarded as a comedic genius. Matt Stone, who together with Trey Parker created South Park, starred in BASEketball. He described Zucker's influence this way: "I used to sit at home with my friends in high school and watch Kentucky Fried Movie and Airplane! and vomit from laughing."

Although these films had some political jokes, the movies themselves did not carry overt political messages. Naked Gun 2 came closest with a vaguely pro-environment theme. (It opens with George H.W. Bush meeting with the heads of America's coal, oil, and nuclear industries: the representatives of the Society for More Coal Energy [pronounced SMOKE]; the Society of Petroleum Industry Leaders [SPIL]; and the Key Atomic Benefits Office of Mankind [KABOOM].) Zucker, who owns a Toyota Prius and derives a third of the energy for his house from photovoltaic cells, is still an environmentalist.

In 1984, one of Zucker's college friends, Rich Markey, suggested he listen to a local Los Angeles talk radio show, "Religion on the Line," hosted by Dennis Prager. Zucker took the advice and soon struck up a friendship with Prager, whose conservative views appealed to Zucker as common sense. Although his politics were evolving, Zucker remained supportive of California Democrats, giving $2,400 to Senator Barbara Boxer in the mid-1990s. He contributed another $600 to an outfit called the "Hollywood Women's Political Committee" which, with members like Jane Fonda, Bonnie Raitt, and Barbra Streisand, probably wasn't calling for low taxes and abstinence education.

Zucker was still nominally a Democrat when George W. Bush was elected in 2000. "Then 9/11 happened, and I couldn't take it anymore," he says. "The response to 9/11--the right was saying this is pure evil we're facing and the left was saying how are we at fault for this? I think I'd just had enough. And I said 'I quit.'"

He decided to write a letter to Boxer, sharing his disgust and telling her not to expect any more of his money. Having never done this before, he asked a friend with the Republican Jewish Committee for help. This friend recommended Zucker contact Myrna Sokoloff, a former paid staffer for Boxer, who had recently completed a similar ideological journey.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Sokoloff had worked for several stars of the Democratic party's left wing. She served on the campaign staff of Mark Green, a close associate of Ralph Nader, when he ran for Senate in New York against Al D'Amato. She worked for Jerry Brown's 1992 presidential campaign and in 1998 was a fundraiser for Barbara Boxer's reelection effort.

Sokoloff had begun to sour on the Democratic party and the left generally during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. "As a feminist, I was outraged," she recalls. "If he had been a Republican president we would have demanded his resignation and marched on the White House." When she made this point to her Democratic friends, she says, they told her to keep quiet.

Although she didn't vote for George W. Bush in 2000, Sokoloff says she was glad that he won. Less than a year later, she understood why. "When 9/11 happened, I knew Democrats wouldn't be strong enough to fight this war."

Sokoloff and Zucker never did write the letter to Boxer, but their partnership would prove much more fruitful.

As the 2004 presidential election approached, Sokoloff and Zucker looked for a way to influence the debate. Their first effort was an ad mocking John Kerry for his flip-flops that the conservative Club for Growth paid to put on the air. In 2006, Sokoloff and Zucker followed that with a series of uproarious short spots mocking, in turn, the Iraq Study Group, Madeleine Albright and pro-appeasement foreign policy, and pro-tax congressional Democrats.

The Iraq Study Group ad was the most memorable. It opens with news footage of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain celebrating the signing of the Munich Agreement. A newspaper stand boasting "Peace with Honour" flashes across the screen.

Neville Chamberlain: "This morning, I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler. Here is the paper, which bears his name upon it, as well as mine."

The spot cuts to footage of German bombers over Warsaw. "Well," intones a narrator, "that negotiation went well. Fifty million dead worldwide. Nicely done, Mr. Chamberlain."

Then viewers are shown footage of imaginary negotiations between James Baker, Syria's Bashar Assad, and "Iranian madman" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Baker's Iraq Study Group had formally recommended talks with Iran and Syria as part of its proposed solution to the problems in Iraq.

When Ahmadinejad asks Baker for permission to develop nuclear weapons so long as Iran promises not to use them, Baker agrees. Triumphant music plays loudly in the background and the diplomacy pauses for a celebration and some photos.

The music stops and Baker returns to the table with Ahmadinejad and Syria's Bashar Assad.

"Next item: You must agree to stop supplying the explosive devices that are killing our American soldiers in Iraq," Baker insists.

"We won't do that."

"Well, can you reduce the number?"

"Okay, how about 10 percent?" Assad proposes.

"Twenty percent," Baker responds.

"Fifteen."

"Five."

"Sold!"

The music starts again and Baker, like Chamberlain, triumphantly waves the signed agreement.

"Now, this thing about destroying Israel," he says to Ahmadinejad.

"We will do that," says the Iranian leader.

Baker shrugs. "That's fair," he says, affixing his signature to yet another agreement and once again waving it before the cameras.

Zucker says that the idea to do a feature film grew out of those ads, and several of the actors in the spots, including Turkish actor Serdar Kalsin, who plays Ahmadinejad, have speaking roles in the film.

If An American Carol grew out of Zucker's work on these commercials, the narrative device dates back to 1843. An American Carol is based loosely--very loosely--on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

"Why be original?" Zucker asks. "I've done that. It doesn't work, like BASEketball"--as he says this, he rolls his eyes and moves his right hand across his body to indicate a car going off a cliff.

The holiday in An American Carol is not Christmas and the antagonist is not Ebenezer Scrooge. Instead, the film follows the exploits of a slovenly, anti-American filmmaker named Michael Malone, who has joined with a left-wing activist group (Moovealong.org) to ban the Fourth of July. Along the way, Malone is visited by the ghosts of three American heroes--George Washington, George S. Patton, and John F. Kennedy--who try to convince him he's got it all wrong. When terrorists from Afghanistan realize that they need to recruit more operatives to make up for the ever-diminishing supply of suicide bombers, they begin a search for just the right person to help produce a new propaganda video. "This will not be hard to find in Hollywood," says one. "They all hate America." When they settle on Malone, who is in need of work after his last film (Die You American Pigs) bombed at the box office, he unwittingly helps them with their plans to launch another attack on American soil.

The entire film is an extended rebuttal to the vacuous antiwar slogan that "War Is Not the Answer." Zucker's response, in effect: "It Depends on the Question."

Zucker had originally hoped to cast Dan Whitney (aka Larry the Cable Guy) as Malone, but a timing conflict kept him from getting it done. After briefly considering Frank Caliendo, a fellow Wisconsinite, a colleague passed him a reel from Kevin Farley, the younger brother of the late Chris Farley, and Zucker, who recalled seeing Kevin Farley in an episode of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, was interested.

Zucker and Sokoloff met Farley in April 2007. Zucker described his new film with words he had chosen carefully. "I figured he was like everyone else in Hollywood--a Democrat," Zucker recalls. "And we knew that this was not a Democrat movie." It would be a satirical look at the war on terror, he told Farley, and explained that he and Sokoloff were political "moderates."

Farley hadn't seen any of Zucker's ads and assumed he was like everyone else in Hollywood--a Democrat. So he answered with some strategic ambiguity of his own. "I consider myself a centrist," he said, worried that they might press him more about his political views.

Zucker gave Farley the script and, concerned that Farley's agent would advise him against accepting the role because of the film's politics, told the actor not to show it to anyone. Farley, best known for his recurring role in a series of Hertz commercials, read the script and called back the next day to accept.

When he met Zucker and Sokoloff on the set as shooting on the film began, he told them that he, too, had long considered himself a conservative. "I couldn't believe it," says Sokoloff. "We were afraid that he would not want to be involved in something that was so directly taking on the left and that he would not want to play the Michael Moore character."

Farley told me this story during a break in filming at the Daniel Webster Elementary School in Pasadena, last April, with Steve McEveety, the film's producer, listening in.

"I thought that the minute we started talking about politics that would be the end," Farley recalls. "There was this dance that we did--a dance familiar to conservative actors in Hollywood. Lots of actors have done it."

"All three of you," said McEveety.

"Yeah, all three of us."

Farley is not aggressive about his politics and has chosen simply to opt out of political discussions when they have arisen on other projects. "I usually just bite my tongue unless it gets too ridiculous," he says. "The only thing that really bothers me is when they go off about the president. It just gets annoying."

If Farley is nervous that his proverbial big break is coming in a film with politics that might make getting his next big role more difficult, he doesn't show it. "If it's the last movie I do, I'll go work for Steve's company," he says.

"If this doesn't work," McEveety deadpans, "I won't have a company."

Yes, he will. He founded the company, Mpower Pictures, two years ago with John Shepherd, a former child actor, and Todd Burns, who helped put himself through law school by working as an EMT. McEveety, whose producing credits include Braveheart, We Were Soldiers, and The Passion of the Christ, is far too well-established to live or die based on the success of one film. And he created Mpower in part because he wanted the freedom to take risks on film projects others in Hollywood wouldn't consider. One such film, The Fallen, will be out later this fall. The film, based on a powerful book by Iranian journalist Friedoune Sahebjam, tells the true story of a young Iranian woman who is framed by her husband on false charges of infidelity and persecuted under the strictures of sharia law. According to McEveety, the Iranian regime has already begun an effort to discredit the film.

McEveety is one of several big names that will make it hard for the Hollywood establishment to ignore An American Carol. Jon Voight plays George Washington. Dennis Hopper makes an appearance as a judge who defends his courthouse by gunning down ACLU lawyers trying to take down the Ten Commandments. James Woods plays Michael Malone's agent. And Kelsey Grammer plays General George S. Patton, Malone's guide to American history and the mouthpiece of the film's writers.

I chatted with Grammer on the set at Warner Brothers studios. "I'm glad some of the bigger guys jumped in--Dennis Hopper, Jon Voight, James Woods."

Grammer has been out as a conservative for several years and has publicly mused about running for office. His name comes up periodically when California Republicans are brainstorming about candidates to take on Barbara Boxer or Dianne Feinstein for their Senate seats. It's not hard to see why. He is passionate about the issues that matter most to conservatives and extraordinarily articulate.

"The accepted way to speak about America is in the voice that disrespects it. And the voice that's unacceptable is the one that loves America," he says, wearing the uniform of an Army general and sipping from a bottle of pomegranate juice. "How did we get here?"

Over the course of two hours, we are joined by several others working on the movie and talk about everything from taxes--"the rich in this country are being criminalized"--to Iraq. "Petraeus has to couch every bit of optimism in some convoluted formulation to avoid the promised rush of disrespect," Grammer says.

Eventually, the conversation turns from policy to punditry. Grammer, who is friends with Ann Coulter, says he quoted her once to some of the young people who work for him.

"'Ann Coulter,'" he says, recalling their horror and assuming their voice. "'She's the antichrist.' And I said: 'What the f-- do you know about the antichrist? You don't even believe in Christ.'"

Robert Davi, who plays the lead terrorist in the Zucker film, joins us as the discussion turns from policy to the cable pundit shows. Davi is one of those actors with an instantly recognizable face--he was the villain in the Bond film Licence to Kill--but whose name is unknown to most of the country.

"I just sit there and watch these shows"--he picks up an imaginary remote from the table in front of him, points it at the imaginary television somewhere to the right of my head and begins clicking--"I watch them all. I cannot watch the murder shows anymore. Greta comes on and"--he changes the channel once more.

Our discussion continues over lunch and we are joined by Myrna Sokoloff, Kevin Farley, and Chriss Anglin, who plays JFK. Lunch lasts an hour, and we discuss marginal tax rates, the Democratic primary, whether John McCain will pick Condoleezza Rice as his running mate, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, and whether the talk of closing Guantánamo is serious or just campaign rhetoric.

Eventually, the conversation turns to the war and the opposition to it--the subject of their current project. "No one on the left wants to admit that radical Islamists want to kill Americans, the Jews--everyone in the West," Davi says. "I try to talk to my friends on the left and they just don't get it. Most of them have never even heard of Sayyid Qutb. How can you have an intellectual discussion about the war we're in without knowing who Sayyid Qutb is?" he asks, raising his voice so that actors from other tables glance over to see what's causing the commotion. JFK concentrates on his food.

Later that same day, I spoke to Lee Reynolds, who plays the New York police officer whose efforts to search the terrorists are thwarted by the ACLU. Reynolds, too, is a conservative--something David Zucker did not know when he cast Reynolds in the anti-Kerry ad he produced in 2004. Reynolds was active duty military for 12 years and shortly after 9/11 worked as the chief media officer for detainee operations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

When he returned, he took a job as a production assistant on a film--he asked me not to name it--shot in several locations across the United States. Reynolds worked hard and, he says, won the confidence of the film's directors, who gave him more responsibility. But just as he was making a name for himself, word began to spread that he had been in the military and, far worse, that he supported the efforts of his uniformed colleagues in the war on terror.

"Once they found out I was a Republican, unfortunately for some people it was a problem," he recalls. Several people who had talked to him regularly throughout the shoot simply stopped. And a trip that he was to have taken to participate in an offsite shoot across the country was abruptly cancelled. Another person was sent in his place. Reynolds says that he had only two colleagues who treated him the same way they had before, including "an anti-Bush lesbian" who was disgusted by the dogmatism of the others on the film. Reynolds, now a reservist, is scheduled to leave for Iraq in early 2009. The more Zucker is known as a conservative, the more frequently he has encounters with others who consider themselves conservative.

On one of the days I was on set, McEveety had invited Vivendi Entertainment president Tom O'Malley to meet Zucker. Vivendi had just agreed to distribute the film and had promised wide release--news that had the cast and crew of An American Carol in particularly good spirits.

O'Malley and Zucker chatted about the fact that O'Malley is the nephew of Candid Camera's Tom O'Malley and that they are both from the Midwest, among other things. Zucker thanked him for picking up the movie, which will be one of the first for Vivendi's new distribution arm. O'Malley told Zucker that he was particularly interested in this film in part because he, too, leans right.

Such revelations are common occurrences at the periodic meetings of the secret society of Hollywood conservatives known as the "Friends of Abe." The group, with no official membership list and no formal mission, has been meeting under the leadership of Gary Sinise (CSI New York, Forrest Gump) for four years. Zucker had spent a year working on a film with Christopher McDonald without learning anything about his politics. Shortly after the film wrapped, he ran into McDonald, best known as Shooter McGavin from Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore, at one of these informal meetings.

"It's almost like people who are gay, show up at the baths and say, 'Oh, I didn't know you were gay!' " Zucker says.

From the beginning, Zucker knew what the political message of An American Carol would be. His problem was how to make it funny.

The war on terror, of course, does not lend itself to hilarity. But Zucker knows comedy and has spent nearly four decades making people laugh. With his friend Lewis Friedman, a comedy writer, Zucker went looking for the absurd in the political left and found an abundance of material.

Zucker and Friedman poked fun of the know-nothing culture of antiwar protests. During a rally at Columbia University, students chant: "Peace Now, We Don't Care How!" Some of their protest signs are ones you'd find at any antiwar rally. Some are not. "9/11 Was an Inside Job," "Kick Army Recruiters Off Campus!" "End Violence--War Is Not the Answer!" "End Disease--Medicine Is Not the Answer!" "It's Too Dark Outside, The Sun Is Not the Answer!" "Overpopulation--Gay Marriage Is the Answer!"

Other claims were so absurd they didn't require exaggeration. "We really didn't have to do a lot of stretching," says Zucker.

When he heard Rosie O'Donnell claim that "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state," he knew he had several minutes of material.

In the film, a rotund comedian named Rosie O'Connell makes an appearance on The O'Reilly Factor to promote her documentary, The Truth About Radical Christians. O'Reilly shows a clip, which opens with a pair of priests walking through an airport--as seen from pre-hijacking surveillance video--before boarding the airplane. Once onboard, they storm the cockpit using crucifixes as their weapon of choice. Next the documentary looks at the growing phenomenon of nuns as suicide bombers, seeking 72 virgins in heaven. A dramatization shows two nuns, strapped with explosives, board a bus to the cries of the other passengers. "Oh, no! Not the Christians!" O'Connell's work ends with a warning about new threats and the particular menace of the "Episcopal suppository bomber."

Zucker is plainly not worried about offending anyone. David Alan Grier plays a slave in a scene designed to show Malone what might have happened if the United States had not fought the Civil War. As Patton explains to a dumbfounded Malone that the plantation they are visiting is his own, Grier thanks the documentarian for being such a humane owner. As they leave, another slave, played by Gary Coleman, finishes polishing a car and yells "Hey, Barack!" before tossing the sponge to someone off-camera.

It is one of just two references to the ongoing presidential campaign. (The other one, more cryptic, comes in a scene that's a throwback to the Iraq Study Group ad. Neville Chamberlain, after polishing Adolf Hitler's boots, signs the Munich Agreement, and declares: "We have hope now.") But Tom O'Malley, president of Vivendi, believes that the timing of the film's release--October 3--will give it special relevance to the current debates. And several of the film's leading figures have strong opinions about Barack Obama. "Obama is not qualified to be president, and it'll be a disaster," says Zucker, who then pauses as if he's said something he should have kept to himself. "Shouldn't I be allowed to say that?"

Zucker says that one of the major differences between the left and the right in America today is that leftists think of their political opponents as evil. "I don't think that Obama is an evil guy, I just think he's wrong. But I do think we face real evil in Ahmadinejad and the mullahs and all these crazy guys."

Does Obama understand that?

"I don't think so. I don't think so."

Zucker points to a National Journal study that found Obama to be the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. "John Kerry was, and Obama is. Fortunately, Kerry was a stiff. But Obama isn't a stiff and he's really adaptable. He's like a really clever virus who adapts. Obama's the farthest left of all of these guys. And that's why he associated with all of those crazies--terrorists, preachers of hate."

Jon Voight, who says he was "duped" as a young man into rallying against the Vietnam war, is also troubled both by Obama's associations and his willingness to end them so abruptly. "When I look at the other side, when I look at Barack Obama, I see expediency," he says, pointing to Obama's relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and assuming Obama's voice. "He's like family. I could never disown him. I didn't know him. I didn't hear those words in that church."

If those behind the film have similar views about Obama, many of them have opposing views about the long-term impact of a film like An American Carol on the movie industry.

"If this does well, it'll change everything," says Grammer.

"I think it would be pompous to say that," says Voight. "It's a movie. It's a satire. And it's a funny satire. I don't want to point to this thing, just because there are so few films from conservative sources, and make it a target. It's a movie. Let's not burden this little horse with additional weights."

David Zucker seems to be of two minds. When I ask him if he had an objective in making the film, he borrows a line from his friend and former partner, Jim Abrahams. "Avoid embarrassment."

He adds: "I don't have any desire to be taken seriously. Really, I really don't. But having said that, I really believe this stuff. Why can't I put it out there? And I'm scared to death of Obama. If I didn't do something about it I would feel--My kids would ask: 'What did you do in the war Daddy?'"

"I donated my career to stop this s--."

Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins) .

By P.J. GladnickCreated 2008-08-04 06:28Perhaps it takes a foreigner looking from the outside in to give us a clear look at the overall meaning of the mainstream media silence on the alleged John Edwards scandal. In this case it is Guy Adams writing in his US Media Diary [1] in the UK Independent about "The 'scoop' the US papers ignored." (emphasis mine):

That old cliché about everything being bigger in America seems especially pertinent when attempting to describe the sheer scale of the crisis currently afflicting the US newspaper industry, which makes all Fleet Street's woes look like a summer picnic.

Last week, The Los Angeles Times decided to flog its historic downtown offices, on top of sacking 150 of its 870 journalists. So did The Chicago Tribune. Almost every title in the land is now shedding staff; a hundred New York Times hacks have been offered voluntary redundancy; Newsweek recently announced cuts. It's a bloodbath out there, as US media companies attempt to claw a pound of flesh from haemorrhaging readerships.

Consider, against this backdrop of falling circulation and a failing industry, the decision of every mainstream paper in America to ignore the juiciest political story of the month (and possibly the year): the discovery by National Enquirer hacks of John Edwards, in the corridors of a Beverly Hills hotel, where his alleged mistress and alleged love child were also staying, at half past two on the morning of Tuesday, 22 July.

Since Edwards was, until recently, hoping to be president and will almost certainly have a prominent role in any Barack Obama administration, his marital integrity is a matter of public interest. It could yet become an election issue. Yet neither the highfalutin NYT, nor the Tribune, nor even the LA Times, on whose patch the whole sordid business occurred, have yet stepped up to the plate to report it. Their old-fashioned reticence seems quaint, in this day of kiss'n'tell and chequebook journalism. But it's also depressing: one of the reasons America's newspapers are dying is their perceived pomposity. Readers say they are too timid to rock the boat; right-wingers complain (with some justification) that they conspire to suppress damaging stories about Democrats. The general public thinks they have simply become boring.

The Edwards story could be selling truckloads of newsprint. It is attracting enormous traffic online, and has been devoured by viewers of Fox, the only TV network to report it. In ignoring the affair, newspapers are sacrificing potential readers and repeating the mistakes of the 1990s, where they loftily decided against reporting Bill Clinton's many bedroom misdeeds, allowing internet sites to claim the Monica Lewinsky "scoop."

The editor of the LA Times, Tony Pierce, has higher concerns, though. He recently sent staff an edict. "There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair," it read. "Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumours or salacious speculations."

I can't pretend to know what Mr Pierce does with his 870 journalists. But if he'd asked just one of them to check out these "salacious rumours" regarding John Edwards the LA Times might have a few more readers, and fewer of the 870 staffers might have to be cut from its bloated payroll.

And in the MSM Wall of Silence category comes this report from a Kansas City Star TV writer, Aaron Barnhart, featured here [1] in NewsBusters last Friday. In contrast to his earlier claim that the MSM has finally begun to report on the John Edwards scandal, Barnhart has now backtracked [2] on his earlier position about the new "openness" of the media on this topic (emphasis mine):

Perhaps I spoke too soon about the whole "John Edwards story going mainstream" business. After a couple of reports by my colleagues elsewhere in the vast McClatchy chain appeared last week, there was bupkis out of the MSM. I mean, I got more traction trying to climb Airport Road in my 1961 Ranchero during an ice storm.

I think all the serious political reporters are just waiting for the National Enquirer to break more news. Then they'll pounce. It's a weird way to do journalism, for sure, but not that surprising. There's very little upside for news editors to be early on this story (no one is talking up Edwards as a VP right now), while the downside is considerable. The blogosphere, however, has gone wild over this story, and simply by deigning to talk about it, TV Barn — a blog, mind you, kept by a MSM entertainment critic — just had its biggest weekend in a decade of service.

Kudos to Mr. Barnhart for being man enough to admit his error and correcting it. Oh, and also thanks for the inadvertent shoutout by referencing this blog as "the adverserial" in the following description of the blogosphere reaction to his earlier piece:

Reaction to my piece has ranged from the adversarial [2] to the hotly adversarial [3] to off-the-charts, like this blogger [4] whose line-by-line analysis of my story would make any JFK/9-11/TWA 800 conspiracy theorist proud.

However, I do think Barnhart was a bit harsh in his latter description of the DBKP blog [5] as making a "conspiracy theorist proud." Any blog that describes [6] your humble correspondent in the following manner deserves praise, not scorn (emphasis proudly mine):

PJ Gladnick, of Newsbusters Writer Claims Edwards Scandal Story Has Finally ‘Trickled Out’ Into MSM [6], does a complete demolition of Barnhart’s other claims about why the MSM didn’t cover the story.

Of course, NewsBusters also took a pass on the story in December. But, NBs has been all over the story in its July reincarnation, chiefly through the efforts of Gladnick. Gladnick’s NewsBusters coverage has been a key element in holding the media’s feet to the fire over the last two weeks.

August 5, 2008 --AFTER a lecture to the Marine Memorial Association last week, a reporter thrust a mike toward me and asked if I thought I should be tried for war crimes for my columns in The Post supporting our military.

The reporter - who avoided revealing what outlet he was with - thought he was being wonderfully clever, but what fascinated me about the silly encounter (it was in San Francisco, after all) was how unintentionally revealing it was about the shameless hypocrisy of the left.

Think about it: For expressing my views to readers like you on these pages, hardcore leftists believe I should be put on trial as a war criminal.

It tells you all you need to know about the extreme left's view of the First Amendment: Free speech is great, as long as it's their free speech (or extreme pornography). But dissenting views must be censored. The more effective the opponent, the more important it is to shut him down.

The extreme left loves to pretend it stands for freedom. It never has and never will. From the Reign of Terror in Paris onward, its core agenda has been the tyranny of egomaniacal intellectuals. The hard left hates an open debate - especially these days, when it's out of new ideas.

The left pretends that campuses should enjoy freedom of speech, yet activist students shout down, harass and even attack speakers whose views they dislike. That's brownshirt behavior, folks - as surely as show trials are Stalinist.

Hardcore leftists never welcome a freewheeling debate - they'd rather force their beliefs on the rest of us. It's an article of faith for the left that folks like you and me are too stupid to know what's good for us (we're so dumb, some of us even believe in God).

For many years, the left's tactic was to pretend to care about average citizens. In the last century, the motto was the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (still a dictatorship, of course). Then, when American workers showed no interest in the Sovietization of Michigan, outraged leftists retreated into the Dictatorship of the Intellectuals.

Now we have the would-be dictatorship of the pseudo-intellectuals.

The stunning hypocrisy of the march-in-step left was brought home to me again on Sunday while I waited in a green room for a C-Span spot.

The show preceding mine featured a young woman, Mahvish Rukhsana Khan, who's published a book about the poor, innocent, kitten-loving prisoners at Guantanamo. Her interview climaxed with the claim that Guantanamo is the equivalent of the Holocaust.

I guarantee you that no one from MoveOn or DailyKos questioned that outrageous comparison. (Nor did the patsy interviewer challenge it.)

The Holocaust's victims were 6 million innocents. The handful of prisoners at Guantanamo are accused terrorists. Guantanamo has no gas chambers; prisoners aren't forced into slave labor. They aren't tortured or starved or shot. And their trials are open to members of the press.

The truly outrageous aspect of such comparisons is that the American left, with its Stalin-redux willingness to rearrange history, neglects to mention that, outside of Japan, all of the 20th century's great totalitarian regimes had roots on the political left.

It wasn't just Lenin and Stalin whose propaganda machine prefigured MoveOn. Nazi is an acronym for "National Socialist." Read Mein Kampf. It isn't a tribute to free-market capitalism, folks. Mussolini was a populist. Mao was a leftist, as was Pol Pot. The last century's worst censors and book burners all emerged from leftist ideologies.

At the moment, the American left evokes our Communists in 1939, who contorted themselves to justify the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Stalin and Hitler. As this column recently pointed out, Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home! disappeared from the political scene the instant Obama called for sending those troops to Afghanistan and Pakistan, instead of back to Fort Hood.

For the hardcore left, the party line always trumps conscience. MoveOn isn't new - it's just Pravda with poor punctuation.

The more I think about that proposed war-crimes trial, the more excited I get. If we could just delay it until President Obama invades Pakistan, he and I could share the prisoners' docket together.

Of course, the charges he'd face would be far worse, given that Saddam Hussein was a genocidal dictator and Pakistan's a democracy. But the left is right: We can't let war crimes go unpunished.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."

And they wonder why people to the right of center on the political spectrum flock to Fox news and listen to talk radio? We have no where else to go if we want balanced news and journalism.

It's like today on "Meet the Press". Someone points out that talking has not helped the situation in Georgia which is opposite of Obama's claims and then you have this guy Dionne literally jumping into the conversation as fast as possible to fix this thought to one in align with the candidate he loves and says this situation actually shows why the US needs to talk more with its European allies in order to deal with the Russian-Georgian problem "so Obama's approach is still completely correct".

Are we to take this spin from a supposedly objective "journalist" by not simply changing the channel? Needless to say I turned off Meet the Press as fast as possible.

Yet Helen Thomas denies any of this. And of course she gets honored. Will there be an HBO documentary honoring Robert Novak who sounds terminally ill?

At a screening of a forthcoming HBO documentary honoring liberal journalist Helen Thomas in Washington, Thomas was asked whether most White House reporters are liberal. “Hell no!” she thundered. I’m dying to find another liberal to open their mouths [sic]. Where are they?”

Is this Grande Dame of Journalism serious? The answer, of course, is yes. Since Ms. Thoms is dying to find vocal liberals in the news media, the least we can do is point her in the right direction.

Let’s see...

ABC’s Claire Shipman says the taxpayers, not the politicians, should sacrifice to close the budget deficit: “If every American were to pitch in $2,000, we could pay off this year's deficit.... Or, if we handed over, each of us, 500 gallons of gasoline or, in terms we could all really understand, if every American gave up 666 lattes for a year, we could pay off this year's deficit.”...Dan Rather predicts Big Oil will try to manipulate the election for John McCain: “The people who can affect the price of oil would prefer a Republican presidential candidate. Watch the price of oil. If it goes down, which it may very well, it could help John McCain quite a bit.”

The Associated Press swoons: “It's not only Obama's youth, eloquence and energy that have stolen hearts across the Atlantic. Obama has raised expectations of a chance for the nation to redeem itself in the role that Europe has loved, respected and relied upon.”...CBS’s Mark Phillips melts in Berlin: “The 200,000-plus crowd confirmed his rock star status, and his more cooperative sounding rhetoric was what the crowd wanted to hear.”...Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times rejects charges of pro-Obama bias with this doozy: “Mr. Obama's weeklong tour of war zones and foreign capitals is noteworthy because it is so unusual to see a presidential candidate act so presidential overseas.”

On “Meet the Press,” NBC’s Tom Brokaw prods Al Gore: “How can you, given the passion that you feel about this issue, turn down the idea that you could be in the administration as a Vice President or as an energy czar or as both?”...With a straight face, retiring New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse claims, “President Clinton played to the center, not the left, in selecting Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.”...NBC labels the late Jesse Helms an “outspoken ultra-rightist,” but waxed about Howard Metzenbaum as a “populist” who “always fought for the little guy.”

NBC’s Matt Lauer presses Barack Obama – as not liberal enough, quoting hotheads at the New York Times: “Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, he's zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that's guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.”...New polls from battleground states delight MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “I'm thrilled with this. Obama's strength in the Northeast, the West Coast and the Great Lakes.”

CBS’s Katie Couric sees bias now: “However you feel about her politics, I feel that Senator Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I’ve ever seen.” … And Time’s former Washington Bureau Chief Margaret Carlson pens, “If there’s anything we need to rescue us from the last eight years, it’s brains, good judgment and experience. Obama has the first two. Gore has all three.”

NBC’s Lee Cowan waxes, "In victory and in defeat Michelle Obama had always been there, dressed as brightly as her husband's smile"....In reference to John McCain’s wife Cindy, New York Times reporter Alessandra Stanley writes: “As the Equal Rights Amendment faded as a cause and conservatism made a comeback, Republican spouses became ever more careful to stay three steps behind their men and the times.”

Former ABC reporter Linda Douglass, now an Obama spokesperson, reveals the obvious: “I have fundamental differences with John McCain on the issues and always have. I don't have any problem criticizing John McCain." …AP reporter Charles Babington cheers: “Obama is something special, a man who makes difficult tasks look easy, who seems to touch millions of diverse people with a message of hope that somehow doesn’t sound Pollyannaish.”

Conservative columnist Bob Novak tells it like it is: "I've been covering presidential campaigns since 1960. I have always said I have never seen the media as much entranced by a candidate than when they were in my very first campaign, in 1960, when they were for JFK. But I'm telling you right now, the enchantment with Obama beats the JFK syndrome."

But Helen Thomas, the so-called Dean of the White House press corps, doesn’t know any liberals in the news media.

CCP, I share your sentiments about slanted news coverage. I always regret finding out important facts through right wing sources instead of from my local paper, the evening news or a show like Meet the Press. For example, I shouldn't have to learn new, relevant facts on the opinion page of the WSJ. Those should be on page one and not just in the WSJ.

I missed the Sunday shows and was reading transcripts this am. Even on Fox, Chris Wallace was very hard on Treasury Secretary Paulson, trying to match the other shows. Assuming Paulson is guilty of something and denying it, then I would understand the tone, but he is OUR (US) treasury secretary and doing his best as far as I know. It seems that a discussion/interview tone could have worked just fine to get the facts out instead of having 100% of the questions being combative. At least he does that to both sides.

Born Rachel Anne MaddowApril 1, 1973 (1973-04-01) (age 35) United States Occupation Radio hostTV host Partner Susan Mikula Rachel Anne Maddow (born April 1, 1973) is an American radio personality and political pundit. She is the host of The Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio and an MSNBC TV show host.[1]

[edit] EducationA graduate of Castro Valley High School in Castro Valley, California, Maddow later obtained a degree in public policy from Stanford University in 1994. She then received a Rhodes Scholarship in 1995 and used it to obtain a D.Phil. in political science from Lincoln College, Oxford University.[2] Her political activism has focused on AIDS and prisoners' rights, especially the prevention of the spread of HIV and AIDS in prisons. She is an outspoken advocate for gay and progressive issues.

[edit] Radio careerMaddow got her first radio hosting job at WRNX (100.9 FM, Amherst, Massachusetts) when the station held a contest for a new on-air personality.[3] She was hired on the spot to co-host WRNX's then premier morning show, The Dave in the Morning Show. She later went on to host Big Breakfast on WRSI, in Northampton, Massachusetts, for two years. She left the show to join the newly created Air America in March 2004.[2] There she hosted Unfiltered along with Chuck D and Lizz Winstead until its cancellation on March 31, 2005.[4] Two weeks later (April 14), her own two-hour-long program, The Rachel Maddow Show, began airing; it was expanded to three hours on March 10, 2008. It currently airs live from New York from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET on weekdays, with David Bender filling in the third hour for the call-in section when Maddow is on TV assignment.

[edit] Television careerMaddow was a regular panelist on MSNBC's Tucker. During and after the November 2006 election, she was a frequent guest on CNN's Paula Zahn Now. In January 2008, Maddow was given the position of MSNBC political analyst and is now a regular panelist MSNBC's Race for the White House with David Gregory and MSNBC's election coverage, as well as a frequent contributor on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.[2]

On April 4, 2008, Maddow was the substitute host for Countdown with Keith Olbermann, her first time hosting a news program on MSNBC. Maddow described herself on air as "nervous," but Keith Olbermann complimented her work and she was brought back to host "Countdown" on May 16, 2008; that day, Countdown was the highest rated news program in the key 25–54 year old demographic.[5] For her success, Olbermann awarded Maddow the 3rd ranking in his regular segment, "World's Best Persons" on the following Monday, calling her "World's Best Pinch-Hitter."[6] Maddow filled in again on Countdown for eight-and-a-half broadcasts while Olbermann was on vacation in July 2008 (including the latter half of the July 21 show).[7] Maddow has also filled in for David Gregory as host of Race for the White House.[2]

It was announced on August 19, 2008, that Maddow will take over the 9 pm ET time slot on MSNBC on September 8, 2008, replacing Dan Abrams.[8] The name of her new show will be 'The Rachel Maddow Show'.[9]

[edit] Personal lifeMaddow lives in Manhattan and Western Massachusetts with her partner, artist and accountant Susan Mikula.[10][11] The couple met in 1999, when Mikula hired Maddow, who was then working on her doctoral dissertation, as a gardener for her country house. They moved in together a year and a half later.[10]****

On March 6, 2007, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof published an article entitled "Obama: Man of the World."

In it, Kristof addressed Barack Obama's upbringing, including his early life in Jakarta when he "got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school."

For some reason, the link to this piece doesn't work anymore. Does the New York Times no longer want folks to read the following paragraphs (h/t Gateway Pundit via NBer mitchflorida):

"I was a little Jakarta street kid," he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics -- and more likely to be aware of their nationalism -- if he once studied the Koran with them.

Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it'll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset."

Moreover, Mr. Obama's own grandfather in Kenya was a Muslim. Mr. Obama never met his grandfather and says he isn't sure if his grandfather's two wives were simultaneous or consecutive, or even if he was Sunni or Shiite.

Further complicating the matter is that Kristof posted a link to this piece at his "On the Ground" blog the night before it appeared in print, and solicited opinions. That link doesn't work, either. Even more mysterious, Obama's official campaign website still has the article available. Makes one wonder what the Times is feeling so squeamish about.

I looked at this site; rather than impartial information, it's so biased it's.......

For example, I like and do a lot of photography. One of the comments on this site was that the angle of the camera on Palin and Gibson during their interview was intentionally biased against Palin. The site went on to say, in contrast, look at two examples of Obama and Hilary; notice how the camera makes them look equal... But the site didn't mention that the one particular camera shot that they chose as an example had Gibson (over 6'0" tall and Palin around 5'4") standing and facing each other. Of course there are height differences. What the article left out is that in most of the interview they were both seated (the two of them looked equal) and/or the camera was on Palin alone looking quite strong. The site is dribble; simple biased reporting rather than factual news. Now I am not a Palin for VP fan, but as one site said, "she appeared confident, disciplined and responded in a manner that showed her readiness to lead." Now maybe you do or don't like her answers to Gibson, or that Gibson was "too" aggressive (that is his job and Palin should be able to handle it) but that is another issue. But don't absurdly slant the facts and blame the cameraman because you don't like how Palin did in the interview.

Other foolish examples exist on the same site. No facts; it's simply biased reporting in it's worst form. To paraphrase GM, maybe they should sell McCain/Palin T shirts on their site.

I'm not a big fan of Newsbusters. It's one of many offshoots from Brent Bozell's Media Research Center, all of which imbue a fairly pro-catholic and religion bias in most of their reporting. They publish CNS News Service which has always struck me as a shrill and one dimensional information source. MRC does some occasional empiric analysis of the MSM that mostly involves frequency counts, i.e. how many times a negative story appears about one candidate compared to his opponent, and tidbit can be derived from its various organs. However, much as I don't like posting pieces from Reverend Moon's house organ The Washington Times, I don't like citing the findings of the MRC and its organs as you often have to excise their orthodoxies first.

Tony Blankley is a reasonable guy in my opinion, but I couldn't agree with him more. MSNB/CNBC have given up any pretenses of objectivity and are just propaganda outlets for the crats. Tony is also correct about the Economist's review of the Freddoso book which actually surprised me. I beleive the Economist pieces are almost always tilted to the left and clearly are wraped to the advantage of the crats. So it very much surpirsed me when I read the piece on the Freddoso which essentially agreed that BO's ties with Ayers is a huge eye opener to extreme left this guy is coming from and how his handlers have reconstructed him out of thin air to be a reconciliator which is completely at odds with his political life. As for BOs gaffs - yes generally not one peep from the MSM about them. Hey did anyone hear Biden's comments about FDR coming out and speaking to the citizens of the US after the 1929 crash on television - before he was President and before TV was invented?

BLANKLEY: Media covering for ObamaObama remains unknownTony BlankleyWednesday, September 24, 2008 The mainstream media have gone over the line and are now straight out propagandists for the Obama campaign. While they have been liberal and blinkered in their worldview for decades, in 2007-08 for the first time, the major media are consciously covering for one candidate for president and consciously knifing the other. This is no longer journalism — it is simply propaganda. (The American left-wing version of the Volkischer Beobachter cannot be far behind.) And as a result, we are less than seven weeks away from possibly electing a president who has not been thoroughly and even half way honestly presented to the country by our watchdogs — the press.

The image of Barack Obama that the press has presented is not a fair approximation of the real man. They have consciously ignored whole years in his life, and showed a lack of curiosity about such gaps that bespeaks a lack of journalistic instinct. Thus, the public image of Mr. Obama is of a "Man who never was." I take that phrase from a 1956 movie about a real life WWII British intelligence operation to trick the Germans into thinking the Allies were going to invade Greece, rather than Italy, in 1943. Operation "Mincemeat" involved the acquisition of a human corpse dressed as a Maj. William Martin, R.M. and put into the sea near Spain. Attached to the corpse was a brief-case containing fake letters suggesting that the Allied attack would be against Sardinia and Greece.

To make the operation credible, British intelligence created a fictional life for the corpse — a letter from a lover, tickets to a London theater, all the details of a life — but not the actual life of the dead young man whose corpse was being used. So, too, the man the media has presented to the nation as Mr. Obama is not the real man.

The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeats any McCain gaffes, while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Internet sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Mr. Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventual one or two clear sentences from Mr. Obama. Nor do you see Mr. Obama's ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the United Nations. Nor his whining and puerile "come on" when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels' disciples, not Cronkite's.

More appalling, NBC's "Saturday Night Live" suggested that Gov. Sarah Palin's husband had sex with his own daughters. That scene was written with the assistance of Al Franken, Democratic Party candidate for Senate in Minnesota. Talk about incest.

But worse than all the unfair and distorted reporting and image projecting, is the shocking gaps in Mr. Obama's life that are not reported at all. The major media simply has not reported on Mr. Obama's two years at Columbia University in New York, where, among other things, he lived a mere quarter mile from former terrorist Bill Ayers— after which they both ended up as neighbors and associates in Chicago. Mr. Obama denies more than a passing relationship with Mr. Ayers. Should the media be curious? In only two weeks the media has focused on all the colleges Mrs. Palin has attended, her husband's driving habits 20 years ago and the close criticism of Mrs. Palin's mayoral political opponents. But in two years they haven't bothered to see how close Mr. Obama was with the terrorist Ayers.

Nor have the media paid any serious attention to Mr. Obama's rise in Chicago politics — how did honest Obama rise in the famously sordid Chicago political machine with the full support of Boss Daley? Despite the great — and unflattering details on Mr. Obama's Chicago years presented in David Freddoso's new book, the mainstream media continues to ignore both the facts and the book. It took a British publication, the Economist, to give Mr. Freddoso's book a review with fair comment.

The public image of Mr. Obama as an idealistic, post-race, post-partisan, well-spoken and honest young man with the wisdom and courage befitting a great national leader is a confection spun by a willing conspiracy of Mr. Obama, his publicist David Axelrod and most of the senior editors, producers and reporters of the national media.

Perhaps that is why the National Journal's respected correspondent Stuart Taylor has written that "the media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis." That conspiracy has not only photo-shopped out all of Mr. Obama's imperfections (and dirtied up his opponent Mr. McCain's image), but it has put most of his questionable history down the memory hole.

The public will be voting based on the idealized image of the man who never was. If he wins, however, we will be governed by the sunken, cynical man Mr. Obama really is. One can only hope that the senior journalists will be judged as harshly for their professional misconduct as Wall Street's leaders currently are for their failings.

I would give serious consideration to cancelling the debate if I were with McCain's camp. This is really ridiculous. I also noticed Couric's interviews with Palin are "gotcha" journalism. Conservatives only voice is talk radio and a few on Fox - such as Hannity (who I actually think is way too partisan and "talking point-like").

ELECTION 2008VP debate moderator Ifill releasing pro-Obama bookFocuses on blacks who are 'forging a bold new path to political power'

The moderator of Thursday's vice-presidential debate is writing a book to come out about the time the next president takes the oath of office that aims to "shed new light" on Democratic candidate Barack Obama and other "emerging young African American politicians" who are "forging a bold new path to political power."

Gwen Ifill of the Public Broadcasting Service program "Washington Week" is promoting "The Breakthrough," in which she argues the "black political structure" of the civil rights movement is giving way to men and women who have benefited from the struggles over racial equality.

Ifill declined to return a WND telephone message asking for a comment about her book project and whether its success would be expected should Obama lose. But she has faced criticism previously for not treating candidates of both major parties the same.

During a vice-presidential candidate debate she moderated in 2004 – when Democrat John Edwards attacked Republican Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton – the vice president said, "I can respond, Gwen, but it's going to take more than 30 seconds."

(Story continues below)

"Well, that's all you've got," she told Cheney.

Ifill told the Associated Press Democrats were delighted with her answer, because they "thought I was being snippy to Cheney." She explained that wasn't her intent.

But she also was cited in complaints PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler said he received after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin delivered her nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., earlier this month.

Some viewers complained of a "dismissive" look by Ifill during her report on Palin's speech. According to Getler, some also said she wore a look of "disgust" while reporting on the Republican candidate.

At that time she said, "I assume there will always be critics and just shut out the noise. It is surprisingly easy."

Ifill, who also works with her network's "NewsHour," is making preparations to moderate this week's debate between the two candidates for vice president, Palin and Democratic Sen. Joe Biden.. She told BlackAmericaWeb.com she thinks debates "are the best opportunity most voters have to see the candidates speaking to issues."

She said she is concerned only about getting straight answers from candidates.

"You do your best to get candidates to answer your question. But I also trust the viewers to understand when questions are not answered and reach their own conclusions," Ifill told BlackAmericaWeb.

"Four years ago, when neither John Edwards nor Dick Cheney proved capable of answering a question about the domestic epidemic of AIDS among African-American women, viewers flooded me with reaction," she said.

She said she will make her own decisions about what questions to ask, adding "the big questions matter."

In the Amazon.com promotion for her book, Ifill is described as "drawing on interviews with power brokers," such as Obama and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In an online video promoting her book, she is enthusiastic about "taking the story of Barack Obama and extending it."

It focuses on four people, "one of them Barack Obama of course," she said.

"They are changing our politics and changing our nation," she said.

On Amazon.com, Ifill is praised for her "incisive, detailed profiles of such prominent leaders as Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and U.S. Congressman Artur Davis of Alabama."

"Ifill shows why this is a pivotal moment in American history," the review says.

She told AP her view of Obama: "I still don't know if he'll be a good president."

She also describes how she met him at the 2004 Democratic convention and since then has interviewed the Illinois senator and his family.

She also boasted that by the time of the debate, "I'll be a complete expert on both" Palin and Biden.

The debate will be held at Washington University in St. Louis, which has posted information about the evening's events online.

Ifill's profile there describes her as a longtime correspondent and moderator for national news programs and includes her service as moderator of the 2004 debate between Edwards and Cheney.

However, there's no mention of her upcoming book. Nor does the website for the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is organizing the meetings of the candidates, mention her book.

WASHINGTON - As expected, a blue ribbon panel from the Ifill Center for Media Ethics cleared award-winning political journalist Gwen Ifill of all charges today, ending a lengthy 20 minute investigation into "ethics" charges that most observers believe were motivated by politics and racism. Ifill, like dynamic groundbreaking President-in-Waiting Barack Obama, is Black. The complete exoneration clears the way for Ifill to moderate the Vice Presidential debate tonight between respected Senate veteran Joe Biden and former beauty pageant loser Sarah Palin.

"I would like to thank Ms.Ifill for her complete cooperation into this unnecessary politically-motivated witch hunt," said Commission Chairperson Gwen Ifill. "On behalf of the entire panel, I would like to offer my sincere apologies for dragging her in and wasting her valuable time on the basis of such obviously flimsy and bogus allegations."

Displaying her famous grace, Ifill said she harbored no ill will toward the inquiry.

"I'm satisfied by the result," said the objective, down-the-middle reporter whose work has earned her numerous awards for broadcast excellence as well as several honorary doctorates in Journalism Ethics. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got debate questions to prepare."

The Ifill Ifill commission was convened late yesterday in the wake of a whispering campaign by racist internet operatives for cancer-ravaged reactionary Senator John McCain. The scurrilous charges included objections to Ifill serving as debate moderator because of her coming best-seller, President Obama: The Audacious Winning Campaign of the African-American Adonis Who Healed the Planet and Stopped the Oceans' Rise, available November 6 from Harper Collins. Save 20% of the $29.95 list price by preordering with your Amazon or Barnes and Noble card.

Some of the whispering campaign focused on the "issue" that Ifill forgot to mention the book to the debate commission, even though the respected media professional has had much on her mind lately, including the massive economic meltdown spurred by years of failed trickle-up Republican economic policies.

Some anonymous partisan critics also faulted Ifill for her work as Editor of BarackBeat Magazine Giant Poster Pullout Special, with over 100 commemorative Obama stickers and free mini-CD of the Jonas Brothers hit "Hope Is In The House," available on newstands now -- for the low cover price of $5.95!

Those criticisms were quickly dismissed by the blue ribbon ethics panel consisting of Ifill, MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann, and veteran Washington press correspondent Gwen Ifill. In its official report, the commission ruled that Ifill's book deal was consistent with prevailing journalism ethics standards, noting that 86% of national broadcast media personalities had similar pending Barack Obama book deals.

Ifill did not escape some criticism from the panel however, as she was warned several times by ranking member Olbermann that "your position of moderator is no excuse not to violently attack Palin."

"As journalism professionals, we are counting on you to do the right thing," said Olbermann, presenting her with the Center's "Dan 'Mr. October' Rather Journalist of the Year" commemorative baseball bat.

"You can depend on me," said Ifill, calmly pounding spikes into the engraved Louisville Slugger. "I promise to conduct myself in the highest traditions of Gwen Ifill."

Unlike Clinton, Biden Gets Pass for Saying He Was 'Shot At' in IraqWhen Hillary Clinton told a tall tale about "landing under sniper fire" in Bosnia, she was accused of "inflating her war experience" by Barack Obama's campaign -- but the campaign has been silent about Joe Biden telling his own questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq. By Bill Sammon

FOXNews.com

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Barack Obama and Joe Biden wave to the crowd as they arrive for a rally in Fredericksburg, Va., Saturday. (AP Photo)

When Hillary Clinton told a tall tale about "landing under sniper fire" in Bosnia, she was accused of "inflating her war experience" by rival Democrat Barack Obama's campaign.

But the campaign has been silent about Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, telling his own questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.

"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube last year. "Number one, you take all the troops out - you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."

But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."

The senior senator from Delaware went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.

"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."

The rest of the press ignored the flap at the time because Biden was viewed as having little chance of ending up on the Democratic presidential ticket. But even after Biden was selected to be Obama's running mate last month, his claim to have been "shot at" drew no scrutiny from the same reporters who had savaged Clinton for making a similar claim that turned out to be false.

FOX News has been asking the Obama campaign for details of the alleged shooting in Iraq ever since Biden was tapped to be vice president. Biden campaign spokesman David Wade promised an answer last week, but failed to provide one.

Meanwhile, the gaffe-prone Biden has again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones - this time in Afghanistan. Biden said he will grill Republican rival Sarah Palin in Thursday's vice presidential debate about "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down."

"If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where Bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."

But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Senators Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.

"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."

Biden never explicitly claimed his chopper had been forced down by terrorists. Nonetheless,

John McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said Obama-Biden officials have been less than forthcoming about Biden's dramatic war stories.

"They never explained Biden's helicopter story from last week - which is very similar to the story about getting 'shot at' in Baghdad," Rogers said.

Detroit news radio station WWJ-AM (950) has fired radio personality Karen Dinkins after she wore a Barack Obama T-shirt while covering a presidential rally on Sunday.

Dinkins, contacted at her home today, said she is surprised about the reaction to her firing after Sunday’s rally at the Detroit Public Library. She said a number of news outlets contacted her after the station let her go on Monday. She said she had worked there for 13 years.

“I was really kind of surprised this is a news story,” she said, adding that she wouldn’t comment further. “I didn’t anticipate it.”

Jane Briggs-Bunting, director of the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, believes sending any type of political message — on air or off — is a no-no for journalists.

“Reporters, we’re on duty 24-7,” Briggs-Bunting said shortly before Obama took the stage this afternoon at MSU. She’s worked for Life and People magazines as well as the Free Press. “I can have an opinion, and my opinion will be heard in the privacy of a voting booth. You can’t publicize your political views on a T-shirt you wear, a button you wear, or a campaign sign in your front lawn. You represent your news organization 24-7.”

A call to WWJ-AM (950) management offices wasn’t immediately returned. But a woman who answered the phone in the newsroom said the station had received a number of calls from upset listeners.

Lorain Obomanu, Dinkins’ union representative at the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists’ Southfield office had no comment, a spokesman said today.

The revelation that PBS's Gwen Ifill plans to release a book on Barack Obama on Inauguration Day raised the suspicion that her moderator role at the VP debate might be other than objective. It was. The evidence of her bias is evident in several of her questions to the candidates. Below are a few examples.

The Forced-Choice Question

The forced-choice question aims to force an answer from a choice of options defined by the interviewer. For example, in the early stages of the Afghanistan War, the late Peter Jennings asked Pervez Musharraf, then President of Pakistan, if the United States in Afghanistan was "bombing too much or too little."

It was a classic forced-choice question designed to create one of two headlines: "Musharraf Criticizes American for Bombing Too Much," or "...Too Little." Mr. Jennings intended to create controversy because controversy sells. Musharraf wisely dodged the question.

During the VP debate, Ifill used forced-choice questions to further her biases. Here's one:

"As America watches these things [Congress struggling with the bailout bill] happen on Capital Hill, Senator Biden, was this the worse of Washington or the best of Washington that we saw play out?"

Honestly now, how many sane, reasonable people see the bailout ordeal as representing the "best" of Washington?

It was a tee-up question for Biden. He said, "neither the best nor worse," but it was, he said, a reflection of the bad economic policies of "the last eight years." In other words, it was the worse of Washington on the Bush-Republican side.

What would an un-bias question in this venue sound like? How about this: As America watches theses things happen on Capital Hill, what should they reasonably expect to be the outcome, and its impact on their lives?

Here's another example of an Ifill forced-choice question:

"Who do you think was at fault? I start with you, Governor Palin. Was it the greedy lenders? Was it the risky home-buyers who shouldn't have been buying a home in the first place? And what should you be doing about it?"

Notice the choice not on the list -- Congressionally driven Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policies that forced banks to make loans to people who had no ability to repay them.

"Senator Biden, how, as vice president, would you work to shrink this gap of polarization which has sprung up in Washington, which you both have spoken about here tonight."

The key twin concepts in that question are "polarization" and "sprung up." The implied bias is that during the Bush administration polarization "sprung up."

Ifill is a smart, educated women. She knows that partisan polarization has been part of Washington since the death of the man the city's named after. She also knows that when the House voted on the first version of the bailout bill, many Democrats voted against it. The "polarization" over the bailout wasn't based on political parties. It was based on economic free-market philosophy.

Here's another Ifill bias-premised question:

"Governor and Senator, I want you both to respond to this. Secretaries of State Baker, Kissinger, Powell, they have all advocated some level of engagement with enemies. Do you think these former secretaries of state are wrong on that?"

This was a back-door effort to support Barak Obama's "no preconditions" statement made during his nomination campaign. Ifill's bias is that there's nothing wrong with what Obama said.

Ifill knows that, diplomatically, "some level of engagement with enemies" goes on all the time, often through back channels using third parties. The idea that we don't communicate with our enemies is a Beltway media myth.

Hers was a cleverly formed question, since a "no" answer to the closed-ended query (a "yes" or "no" type question) with which it ends (Do you think...?) would sustain the notion that what Obama said is consistent with, and analogous to, what the former Secretaries of State say. Ifill uses the question to establish conceptual parity without the opportunity to challenge the premise.

(Peter Jennings tied this tactic once with General Tommy Franks, and Franks made Jennings, unaccustomed to being challenged, sit up straight in his chair by saying, "Peter, I don't accept the premise of your question.")

Here's another example of a biased question.

"Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the Constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?"

Out of left field, Ifill interjects the man Democrats love to hate, Dick Cheney, into the debate. She attributes an unexplained and unsubstantiated interpretation of the Constitution to Cheney, and then asks Palin to defend or attack that interpretation. (What interpretation?)

It was a question designed to trap Palin, akin to Charlie Gibson's "Bush Doctrine" question. Palin gave a one sentence non-committal answer, and then moved away from the topic. The question gave Biden another chance to demonize Cheney, and display his strikingly faulty understanding of when the VP presides over the Senate. He said,

"The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress."

Say what? This notion when unchallenged by Ifill. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution reads:

"The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

"The Senate shall choose their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States."

Cheney, and other Vice Presidents, could sit up on the platform and preside over the Senate every time it's in session, but they've other things to do. This is Biden's "no authority" interpretation.

Here's another example of a bias-premised question from Ifill.

"Let's come full circle. You both want to bring both sides together. You both talk about bipartisanship. Once again, we saw what happened this week in Washington. How do you change the tone, as vice president, as number two?"

Surely Ifill noticed that both support and opposition to the bailout bill was "bipartisan" in that members of both parties voted both for and against it. And surely she noticed that the most inflammatory language of that week was voiced by Speaker Pelosi when she called Republicans "unpatriotic" (but had no public name-calling for her initial 95 Democrat "no" votes).

One last example under this category of bias-premised questions:

"[To Biden] Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples."

This question was designed to get the attention of the conservative Republican base in order to erode Palin's favor there. Palin noticed that and made a point of saying,

"But I will tell Americans straight up that I don't support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman, and I think through nuances we can go around and round about what that actually means."

Ask yourself this question: What influence does the Vice President have on individual state marriage policies that would warrant this question in a VP debate? The answer is - none. It was all about attempting to embarrass Palin before the GOP base.

The Contrived Dichotomy Question

Listen for the contrived dichotomy buried in this convoluted question from Ifill.

"Senator Biden, we want to talk about taxes, let's talk about taxes. You proposed raising taxes on people who earn over $250,000 a year. The question for you is, why is that not class warfare and the same question for you, Governor Palin, is you have proposed a tax employer health benefits which some studies say would actually throw five million more people onto the roles of the uninsured. I want to know why that isn't taking things out on the poor, starting with you, Senator Biden."

Nevermind Ifill's specious citation of an unnamed, uncertified source as "some studies." (What studies?) Note the dichotomy she creates within her question: Biden wants to tax the rich versus Palin wants to take health insurance away from the poor.

Another tee-up for Biden. He begins his answer with,

"Well Gwen, where I come from, it's called fairness, just simple fairness."

Conclusion

To conclude that Gwen Ifill's moderating efforts displayed through her questions were without bias requires a willing suspension of disbelief.

Her moderator performance represents another sad day for America's entrenched, and ever less objective, television journalism.

Doug,Great post. The bias is eaily there. All these questions begin the premise that everything BO says is o target and the repsondent can agree or try to disagree. I didn't watch the debate so I don't know but I would be willing to bet there were no such manipulated questions that could benefit McCain.

McCain was foolish not to demand she be withdrawn as moderator.

That all said, the Republicans tried and failing answer to economic woes which for the last 3o years, is deregulate, lower taxes is woefully no longer enough. When 1% of the population wons 90% of the wealth in this country there is clearly something wrong.

The game is clearly corrupt and rigged. I see it in the music "industry" which is nothing more than organized crime.

The Republicans fail to address this and until they do they will always be fighting the uphill battle.

I have not yet heard one Rebublican leader address this. Trickle down economics is *not* enough.

Only the liberal media could come up with this crap about McCain. The "maverick" label supposedly came from a couple of ultra liberal family members named Maverick. So of course the logic goes, how dare McCain who is a Republican call himself one. I recall the label was no problem when McCain was for campaign finance reform at a time when it would have hurt the cans more then the crats.

Leave it to the times to print this.

By JOHN SCHWARTZPublished: October 4, 2008 There’s that word again: maverick. In Thursday’s vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate, used it to describe herself and her running mate, Senator John McCain, no fewer than six times, at one point calling him “the consummate maverick.”

Skip to next paragraph

BRAND Samuel Augustus Maverick But to those who know the history of the word, applying it to Mr. McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive.

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.

Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.

This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.

Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”

“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”

If a respected journalist says something controversial at a media conference filled with reporters and bloggers but no one reports it, what is one to make of that?

Mark Halperin, an editor at large for Time magazine and coauthor of the campaign field guide "The Way to Win," was one of several speakers at yesterday's conference on the 2008 election sponsored by Time and CNN in New York. During his panel discussion, Mr. Halperin was asked if the media had been too soft on Mr. Obama. To the surprise of the largely liberal audience, his answer was yes. He went on to say that through the subtle choice of which stories to cover and where to deploy investigative resources, the national media had handed Mr. Obama "hundreds of millions in free publicity." He attributed the positive coverage in part to the historic nature of Mr. Obama's candidacy. But he also noted that only a few hands had gone up in the crowded room when the audience had been asked how many had voted for George W. Bush.

He quickly tempered his remarks by noting that John McCain had similarly been the beneficiary of positive media coverage in his 2000 campaign. "It is interesting that the media's favorite candidates in both parties both won their party's nominations this year," he observed. He called on reporters to look at their 2008 coverage of candidates after the election, in hopes that in the future "they do a better job treating people equally."

Mr. Halperin's comments were pithy, well argued and controversial. Yet, almost 24 hours after they were made, it appears none of the bloggers and reporters present for the event have chosen to report on them -- perhaps providing validation for his core statement about how bias is reflected in the choice of which stories to report and which to ignore.

Frankly I don't believe it. What I do believe is that this is propaganda designed to throw McCain off his negative attacks because BO is vulnerable. The MSM can't have that. Many want us to fall for the dishonest fluff hook line and sinker.

It is truly amazing. Every time I log on to the Yahoo web page there is another assoicated press article trying to make McCain look inept. Now they criticize him for "Joe" the plumber. And of course they dismiss Joe as not licensed.Not once do we hear anything about BO's flip flops, his changes of opinion aka Clinton with direction of whatever the polls tell him to say. Not once do we hear anything critical about him.

Oh well. WE are destined to be a weaker country I guess. Yes in the beginning BO will look wonderful flying around with photo ops from adoring fans and foreingners who want us weaker. I fear that by the time the majority of Americans have waken up it will too late. The Republicans need new leadership and ideas and people who CAN articulate and can string the ideas together into some coherent strategy that appeals to more people. The old conservatism is too simplistic IMO.

And what the f#%^! is this media drivel that McCain should have vetted a private citizen-- in front of his own home yet!-- challenging His Glibness with a focused question that got His Glibness to reveal his heart on a fundamental issue?!? THAT is what matters here!!!

Joe the Plumber vs. Joe the Hair-PluggerPut that in your pipe and solder it.

By Mark Steyn

Give a man enough rope line and he’ll hang himself. There was His Serene Majesty President-designate Barack the Healer working the crowd at some or other hick burg, and halfway down the rope up pops a plumber to express misgivings about the incoming regime’s tax plans.

Supposedly, under the Obama tax plan, 95 per cent of the American people will get a tax cut. You’d think that at this point the natural skepticism of any sentient being other than six-week-old puppies might kick in, but apparently not. If you’re wondering why Obama didn’t simply announce that under his plan 112 per cent of the American people will get a tax cut, well, they ran it past the focus groups who said that that was all very generous but they’d really like it if he could find a way to stick it to Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove and whatnot. So 95 per cent it is.

By the way, like the nightly news shows, this column now has an exclusive lavishly funded Fact Check Unit set up at great expense (a colorful graphic with the words “FACT CHECK ALERT!”) in a lame attempt to pass off our transparent political bias as some sort of scientific exercise. Our accredited credentialed licensed expert Fact Checkers from the University of Factology in the Czech Republic are standing by to rigorously Fact Check the candidate’s claims. We check facts so you don’t have to. All you have to do is sign up to our Fact-Check-Me-Now! service and we’ll send you a daily Fact Check on your Facts Machine, which costs only $79.95 from Radio Shack (sorry, no checks).

Anyway, our Fact Check Unit ran the numbers on the Obama tax-cut plan and the number is correct: “95.” It’s the words “per cent” immediately following that are wrong: that’s a typing error accidentally left in from the first draft. It should read: Under the Obama plan, 95 of the American people will get a tax cut.

Joe the Plumber expressed his misgivings about the President-in-waiting’s tax inclinations, and the O-Man smoothly reassured him: “It’s not that I want to punish your success,” he told the bloated plutocrat corporate toilet executive. “I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

In that sentence about you spreading the wealth around, there’s another typing error: that “you” should read “I, Barack.” “You” will have no say in it. Joe the Plumber might think he himself can spread it around just fine, but everyone knows “trickle-down economics” don’t work. So President-presumptive Obama kindly explained the new exquisitely condescending “talking-down economics:” Put that in your pipe and solder it.

Evidently the O-Mighty One was not happy after his encounter with Joe. He’s still willing to talk to Ahmadinejad without preconditions. But never again will he talk to Joe the Plumber without preconditions. Outraged at the way the right-wing whackos were talking up Joe the Plumber as if he were an authentic regular Joe like Joe Biden, the O-Bots of the media swung into action. Vast regiments of investigate reporters were redeployed from the Wasilla Holiday Inn back to the Lower 48.

“We need you down here checking out this Joe the Plumber,” editors barked to journalists.

“But I’m this close to wrapping up the Wasilla Town Library banned-book investigation!”

“Forget it! The Atlantic Monthly is claiming Joe the Plumber is Trig’s real father. We can’t get behind on this. Get to Minneapolis Airport. Joe the Plumber was seen in the bathroom with Senator Larry Craig.”

“Yes, but he was installing a stopcock…”

“Look, you went to Columbia School of Journalism. This is what we bold courageous journalists do. We’re the conscience of the nation. We speak truth to plumber.”

“Er, shouldn’t that be ‘Speak truth to power’?”

“That’s the old edition of the handbook. Now we speak truth to power-tool operators. Joe the Carpenter, Joe the Plasterer, Joe the Electrician… When you’re building utopia, you don’t want any builders getting in the way.”

Alas, as a result of this massive investment of journalistic resouces, no investigative reporter will be free to investigate ACORN voter-registration fraud or Obama’s ties to terrorist educator William Ayers until, oh, midway through his second term at least.

Under the headline “Is ‘Joe The Plumber’ A Plumber? That’s Debatable”, John Seewer of the Associated Press triumphantly revealed that Joe is not a “licensed” plumber. In fact, he doesn’t need to be licensed for the residential plumbing he does, but isn’t that just typical of Bush-McCain insane out-of-control deregulation? It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that most of these subprime homeowners got Joe in to plumb their subprime bathrooms. Next thing you know, the entire global economy goes down the toilet. Coincidence?

Joe is now the most notorious plumber in American politics since the Watergate plumbers. And they weren’t licensed, either. It turns out Joe doesn’t even make 250 grand, and it’s only the 250-thousand-a-year types who’ll be paying more (please, no tittering) under Good King Barack. Joe Biden — that’s Joe the Bluecollar Senator — said that he didn’t know any 250,000-dollars plumbers in his neighborhood, or even in the first-class club car on Amtrak he rides every night to demonstrate his bluecollar bonafides. On Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer emphasized this point, anxious to give the apostate plumber one last chance to go with the flow:

“Well, I just want to ask you now about the issue that was raised, because it’s been a little confusing to me as I try to sort it out here. To get straight here, you’re not taking home $250,000 now, am I right?”

“No. No. Not even close,” confessed Joe.

So what’s he got to be worried about?

The heart of the American Dream is aspiration. That’s why people came here from all over the world. Back in eastern Europe, the Joe Bidens and Diane Sawyers of the day were telling Joe the Peasant: “Hey, look, man. You’re a peasant in the 19th century, just like your forebears were peasants in the 12th century and your descendants will be peasants in the 26th century. So you’re never gonna be earning 250 groats a year. Don’t worry about it. Leave it to us. We know better.” And Joe the Peasant eventually figured that one day he’d like to be able to afford the Premium Gruel with just a hint of arugula and got on the boat to Ellis Island. Because America is the land where a guy who doesn’t have a 250-grand business today might just have one in five or ten years’ time.

I’m with Joe the Plumber, not Joe the Hair-Plugger. He’s articulated the animating principles of America better than anyone on either side in this campaign. Which is why the O-Bots need to destroy him. As Obama’s catchphrase goes:

“Joe the Plumber!

Can we fix him?

Joe the Plumber!

Yes, we can!”

For the record, I am not a government-licensed pundit. But I expect they’ll fix that, too.